REEL TOP 40 RADIO REPOSITORY

Jay Philpott (Jaydio@aol.com) was born in St. Louis, but moved to Minneapolis at age 4, when his father went to work building the first large mainframe computers at Control Data's worldwide HQ. Jay knew he wanted to be in radio at age 9 or 10, there was never any doubt in his mind -- he would listen to KDWB and WDGY constantly, day and night, and appointments with career counselors in high school were very brief.

In 1972, his father was transferred to "Silicon Valley", and he moved to the San Francisco Bay area. It was there that he was exposed to the legendary Top 40's KFRC, KYA and KLIV in San Jose. Jay was also fascinated by the emerging "progressive" formats on KSAN, KSJO and KOME. While attending Leland High School in San Jose, he worked on the school's 10-watt FM station KLEL, and managed to do some phone answering at KYA in San Francisco for night guy Gary Bryan.

Unfortunately, the old man was transferred again, and Jay was back to Minnesota in his junior year. As soon as he arrived in the Twin Cities, he got a promotion/production internship at 15 KSTP, "The Music Station" in 1977/78. In 1979, Jay's first fulltime gig was at Parks KFMX (Disco 104) in Minneapolis doing 10p-2a. He moved over to WLOL in 1980 and stayed for 4 years.

Since then, Jay has worked at KNBQ/Seattle... WQFM, WLZR, WKLH/Milwaukee... WNOR/Norfolk...WYMG/Springfield, IL.... KSD-FM/St. Louis...WRQC and WLOL Minneapolis... KZPS/Dallas-Ft. Worth.... Clear Channel as the Operations Manager for the Charleston, South Carolina cluster... and in Milwaukee at WHQG, WQBW and WRIT.

In addition to aircheck collecting, Jay's hobbies include skydiving and astronomy. His collection includes several classic parodies of the radio and jingle biz. Recently, Jay authored Ain't Misbehavin', Just Conclavin', a 148 page history of The Conclave Learning Conference as it celebrated its 30th anniversary. (It's available at www.theconclave.com).

Jay currently resides in St. Louis doing freelance voiceovers and serving as an instructor at The Broadcast Center and on the air weekends at Bonnevilles' 106-5 The Arch (WARH).
Thank you, Jay!

PARENTAL DISCRETION ADVISED (adult language)
These outtakes from a TV spot voice-over session by the late Orson Welles show just how difficult it can be for legendary artists to work with average producers... or, maybe, how difficult legendary artists can be.

The date, place and client of this session was unknown when this exhibit first opened in August of 1997. An early comment identified the client as Finder's, but we now believe the client was acutally FINDUS Frozen Foods.

[Update Notice] An additional minute was submitted by Hank Hayes and added to the end of the exhibit in November, 1998.

..The consulting firm developed, refined, molded, polished, honed, shaped and pulled out of left field a revolutionary, new formatic concept. 9 Double-Oh Radio became: 9!

When this was created, approximately 1972 or 1973, it was called "The Ultimate Radio Format". The "9" tape is the cleverest, most wickedly pointed satire of Top 40 Radio formatics ever produced. Follow the evolution of the fabled WVWA, Poundridge, New York, as its on-air sound evolves and matures.

(September 7, 1996)Howard Hoffman was part of the crew that produced this classic in 1974, and has provided the Repository with a 15 ips reel copy of the original master! Thanks, Howard! Here's the story behind Nine as told by Howard:

"I returned to WALL/Middletown NY in August 1974 after a lengthy 3-month gig as production director at WDRQ/Detroit, so I was primed to do anything that could shoot down formatted index-card radio. Radio itself presented the ammo. Randy West (also at WALL at the time) and I were driving around greater Middletown listening to WWDJ through the static shortly after Mark Driscoll took over the reigns. They had already shortened their moniker from 97/WWDJ to 97/DJ - but for reasons known only to Driscoll, they started calling it "9/J" (using the slogan Pass the J - the formatic lasted about 9 hours before they went back to "97/DJ"). Randy and I stopped the car, looked at each other and simultaneously yelled, "What's NEXT?! They're just gonna open the mikes and yell 'NINE'!?! Epiphany.

A few weeks later, we were joined by Pete Salant and Amos B Moses in the production studio at WALL, and created the Nine tape under the influence of some refreshments which sure made the whole thing seem a lot funnier. (We were later pleased to find we still laughed after the "refreshments" wore off.) We were supposed to write an ending to it, but Jim Brownold (then-production director at WPLJ/New York) got a copy of the work in progress from me. The ABC engineers heard it, dubbed off a trillion copies and Nine was out there. The version they spawned was before all the processing and post-production which I quickly performed due to demand. We never did make an ending for NINE, and as it turned out, we never really needed it... the whole thing is one big payoff.

The NINE jingle came from a WABC "Old Gold 1969" jingle. For authenticity, the NINE news sounder was WWDJ's news sounder. Don't Ask.

And to Mark Driscoll, who now knows he unwittingly inspired this masterpiece... thanks."

[CURATOR'S NOTE: Jay Philpott made the original contribution of this classic to the Repository
in early 1996. Howard Hoffman upgraded the audio and background a few months later. In 1999, the original "9" production crew created 99. We are pleased to have been selected to present this Exclusive World Premiere.]

Payless Productions of Fort Worth was the brainchild of several students at Ohio University in the mid-1970's and was responsible for four jingle demo parodies.

Here is the original There Buddy demo from Payless, arguably one of the most memorable jingle demo parodies of all time. There Buddy is loosely based on TM's Country Music Radio custom package produced for WMAQ Chicago, but after the first few bars any further resemblance is purely coincidental. Other Payless "demos" parodied PAMS' Solid Rock and Energy One, and TM's Shockwave. Decorum prevents most of their titles being printed here.

You may note some drop-outs and distortion. This is due to the fact that the Payless policy was to master all recordings on cheap tape. It was subsequently stored in basements and attics for 25 years.

"Aerosmith and Fleetwood Mac back to back on WLS. What is AM radio comin' to?"

During my trips to visit family in St. Louis at Christmas and in the summer, I never missed the chance to listen to WLS. Since Chicago is only about 350 miles away, WLS was fairly audible in St. Louis, even in the daytime. After listening over the Christmas 1975 holiday period, I found out who the Program Director of the station was, and wrote him asking for a station hitlist or a bumper sticker. A month or so later, I received a personal reply from PD John Gehron himself, and this composite aircheck, fully scoped by a WLS producer with some great edits. An unbelievable and inspiring gift to a
15-year-old radio wanna-be, and for that, Mr. Gehron, I am truly grateful!

In 1995, our paths crossed again when I was at KSD, then owned by American
Radio Systems. I wrote Mr. Gehron (a senior executive with the company)
another letter thanking him for the inspiration, and letting him know I was
working for him now, in St. Louis. I received another gracious reply from a
truly class act in our business!

Another fine parody of radio that focuses in on all the things that can go wrong at a smaller market station, in this case: KBIZ/Bismarck, North Dakota. This was produced by members of the staff of WIFI, Philadelphia around 1980. The narration is by KB-13's "Johnny West", played by Dave Hamilton, now Operations Manager of KQRS/KXXR/KZNZ, Minneapolis, and
Dr. Homer Martinson is played by Bill Gamble of WXCD, Chicago.
(PARENTAL DISCRETION ADVISED: Profanity)

"Stand by for action, just as soon as I can reach the other tape recorder..."
"Watch it, this guy's been drinkin' and smokin' tonight..."

This parody lampoons the jingle package demos that flooded programmer's offices in the 70's. This was created by now broadcast consultant Pete Salant (the narrator of Nine) at the age of 19. Pete says he produced both the "Really Ripoff Production Company" and the "Heavy Jingle Company" several weeks apart in the minimally equipped production studio of WKBR, Manchester, New Hampshire. Nine was created a year later.